Poll

Columns

Sometimes we do things, even unintentionally that we regret. It just proves how infallible we all really are. This weekend I did something I regret, and it was not intentional.

A friend and I went fishing off Cedar Key last weekend and we had a great time. Afterwards when we got back to shore, we decided to take in one of the fine restaurants there. It was late and by the time we cleaned up the boat and got home, it would have been way past dinner time. Eating out at one of Cedar Key's great restaurants made sense.

Still not many reports from offshore as strong east winds have made offshore fishing uncomfortable. My best guess is that as the days get shorter the fish come in closer, especially down by Crystal River and Homosassa. The King mackerel fishing has been so poor all year that I do not expect any kind of a run this fall. I would love to be wrong however.

It was almost evening, the air was cool. A light rain had settled in after lunch. It had rained for about three hours, puddles had formed here and there. The soil was dampened enough to knock down the dust, allowing the green to come up from the soil.

The breeze dropped down and swung around from the northeast. A chop with small waves was on the water, to the south and west; the tide was on the wane. Odors from the exposed flats wafted in from behind. That familiar, pungent, almost sweet smell of the marshes at low tide.

We have had two close calls so far this year and hurricane season is not over yet. My wife said it's time to get hurricane shutters.

We made it through Hurricane Charley last year but I think she is right: We should be counting our blessings. We did not have a single window broken during that hurricane, though the wind took our roof off. That's not to say the next hurricane won't knock out our windows.

My typing finger is healed and I am once again able to knock out a fishing report.

I didn't get a chance to read Zed's article, but I hope his wife Angel (rightly named for putting up with Zed) did the typing because Zed's spelling is well, I would call it unique. He is certainly one of a kind...in many ways.

The redfish that came here last fall as real runts seem to have grown up, if they are the same group of fish.

Next week heralds the official start of fall, of autumn. You can't tell that by the air temperatures yet, but you do notice the shorter days and the longer nights. And as the sun is lower in the daylight sky, the moon is higher in the nighttime.

We are about half way through the season of spring tides with the highs being unusually high, the lows, low.

We are half way through our hurricane season along the eastern Gulf. After nearly a month of storms and hurricanes plaguing the Cedar Keys with rain and wind, the skies are clearer and the noontime temperatures are hot.

"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?' Jesus answered, 'I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.'" (Matthew 18:21-22 NIV)

It was September in 2001. It had been a hard year. I'd had my first major bout with the disease that nearly took my life. Dad had had a couple major surgeries on his circulatory system. He had been a smoker for about sixty years and his arteries were plugged with deposits once known as hardening of the arteries. Mom had been sick for several years partly due to smoking half her life. It was complicated by Temporal arteritis, a rare disease, that left her with large wounds on her head, blinded in one eye with poor vision in the other. Then she contracted shingles leading to more suffering.